Jason Pankau and I recently teamed up with Linkage to offer a course on our book, Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion. Creativity and Productivity. The course includes video with supporting participant and facilitator guides. Here is a backgrounder on the program entitled Fired Up Leadership to Boost Productivity and Innovation.
Tag Archives: employee motivation
Free Webinar: Re-energize Employees
Employees have been through a difficult season at work. Layoffs, fewer resources and financial stress have taken a toll on employee enthusiasm, energy, engagement and alignment with their organization’s goals. What should managers do to help employees recover, refocus and re-energize for the season ahead. Jason Pankau and I are delighted to partner with the Best Practice Institute where we will be presenting a free hour-long webinar on the topic of re-energizing employees following the “Great Recession.” The webinar will occur on July 14 at Noon EST. To read the webinar description and sign up:
- Click on this link
- Enter the Promo Code STPABP2 in on the right side (under the member sign-in box)
- You will be redirected to a page where you will need to enter information about yourself (i.e. your name, email and job position). After this page is filled out, you will be registered to watch the webinar for free!
This is a timely topic and we hope you will join us.
Employee Engagement: Beryl Companies
One of my favorite business books is Paul Spiegelman’s Why Is Everyone Smiling?. Spiegelman is the CEO of Beryl Companies, a call center outsource company for the healthcare industry. On March 24-25 I’ll be moderating a session at the Conference Board’s Customer Experience Management Conference in New York City where Paul will be speaking. You can learn more about the conference at this link. And be sure to check out the above webcast I hosted with Paul.
Leadership Wisdom: Howard Behar
One of my favorite business books is Howard Behar’s It’s Not About the Coffee. Behar is the former president of Starbucks International and Starbucks North America. On March 24-25 I’ll be moderating a session at the Conference Board’s Customer Experience Management Conference in New York City where Howard will be speaking. You can learn more about the conference at this link. And be sure to check out the above webcast I hosted with Howard.
Employee Engagement: Why Now, More Than Ever
Reading this article in The New York Times about the mood in New Orleans now that its football team, the Saints, is in the Super Bowl, got me thinking about employee engagement. The article identifies a factor that has boosted the morale of New Orleans residents. It is a factor that has a positive impact on employee morale, too. What is it?
Jobs, Apple: What’s at their Core?
LiveMint/The Wall Street Journal in India asked me to comment on why Steve Jobs and Apple have been so successful. In an interview entitled “‘Think Different’ is What Makes Apple Stand Out,” I shared that it is more than the beauty and functional excellence of Apple’s products that make the firm so successful. Apple’s inspiring identity plays an important role too. (Above is a video of the original “Think Different” television ad.)
Employee Engagement Conversation w/Michael Bungay Stanier
It was my good fortune to be a guest on Michael Bungay Stanier’s Great Work podcast interviews series to discuss employee engagement and leadership. Michael is the founder and Senior Partner of Box of Crayons, a firm that provides coaching and training services to organizations. He authored the book Do More Great Work and writes the Great Work blog. I find Michael so knowledgeable and interesting. He was the 2006 Canadian Coach of the Year, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, holds a Masters of Philosophy from Oxford, and law and arts degrees with highest honors from the Australian National University. You can listen to our conversation at this link.
Hardwiring Talent Management
One way to think of organizations is that they are a bundle of resources, processes and values (referred to as the RPV framework). Leaders need to actively manage all three elements of the RPV mix. In this post I would like to zero in on processes. Processes are to organizations what hardwiring is to the human brain: it allows the organization (or organism) to complete routine tasks with minimal expenditure of energy and resources while bringing consistency and proven reliability to execution.
Two processes I recently learned about that support talent management are One Page Talent Management and Online Mentoring.
Is China the Next Enron?
In his The New York Times column, Tom Friedman asks and answers the question: Is China the next Enron? He argues that Chinese censorship of the web restricts knowledge flows and doing so diminishes the rate of innovation. There is compelling historical evidence to support Friedman’s view. As I explained in my book Fired Up or Burned Out:
The danger to nations that reduce knowledge flow is apparent throughout history. By isolating themselves and their countries, the leaders of civilizations have missed opportunities for innovation and growth. China in 1400 had the best and largest fleet of ships in the world (over a period of three years the Chinese built or refitted 1,681 ships). With their enormous fleet, the Chinese sailed to Indonesia, Arabia, East Africa, and India. Gradually, however, the Chinese emperor’s attitude toward the benefits of foreign travel shifted as he favored domestic agriculture over maritime interests. By 1436, the Chinese were diverting resources from maintaining the ships, and by 150o, anyone who built a ship with more than two masts was subject to the death penalty. In 1525, the Chinese authorities ordered all oceangoing ships to be destroyed and their owners arrested.
A period of Chinese isolation from the rest of the world began. At the time of the ships’ destruction China led the world in innovation. It had developed gunpowder, deep drilling, printing, paper, porcelain, cast iron, and the compass. China’s isolation, however, prevented it from knowing about developments beyond its borders, the ideas and information that had contributed to its high rate of innovation when Chinese ships were sailing the world. In recent decades, economic reforms and social freedoms have reconnected China to the broader world, resulting in increased Chinese economic growth.
Like the Chinese civilization, the Arab-Islamic civilization became isolated in the sixteenth century as its leaders adopted the view that the world beyond them had little to offer. As a result of the isolationism adopted by the Chinese and Arab-Islamic civilizations, both began a period of steady decline in innovation and economic output.
Open the Books, Boost Employee Engagement
Employee engagement increases when a business opens its books and invites employees to contribute their opinions about how to improve performance. Here’s a wonderful story entitled “A Reluctant Retailer Decides to Open Her Book,” by Jack Stack, one of the pioneers of open book management. Jack is a hero in my book. Years ago he saved a business and many jobs by creating SRC Holdings from a division that was going to be shut down by its parent company. You can read about it in a book I highly recommend entitled The Great Game of Business.